142 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



become wholly extinct, while the range of many others has been greatly 

 restricted and their numbers much reduced. The giraffe, zebra and 

 various species of the remarkable African antelope group have been 

 destroyed in great numbers everywhere and exterminated over large 

 areas. The reduction in the number of elephants is explained by the fact 

 that, according to Lucas (1889) about 100,000 elephants, a "procession 

 1 80 miles long," were annually killed to supply the world with ivory. 

 The time seems near when many animals that now give pleasure to 

 thousands of people may no longer be seen. 



Carl Akeley, just before his tragic death, wrote: "I have just come 

 in from a two days' trip down the Tana, through a region I have 

 known only as swarming with game, but I now find it a complete waste. 

 There is only a pitiful remnant of the great buffalo herds of the past, 

 and of the other game almost nothing. This is the condition we have 

 found everywhere we have been in the Kenya colony." 



Some writers, visiting certain regions in Africa and finding game 

 still abundant, make the mistake of assuming that it is not in danger, 

 but abundance is not the test. There are three questions to be consid- 

 ered in all such problems: i. What is the relative abundance or scarcity 

 of the animals as compared with conditions a few years or many years 

 before? 2. From how much of the range of each species has it been 

 within recent years exterminated or nearly so? 3. How effectively are 

 the animals of the region now being protected? Judging from the ac- 

 counts published by the men in best position to judge as to these ques- 

 tions, many large African animals are in serious danger of extinction. 2 

 While the American bison was being exterminated, many observers, 

 passing through its range and seeing large herds, but knowing nothing 

 of the vast numbers that had occupied the territory a short time before, 

 declared that they needed no legislative protection, as it would be 

 impossible to exterminate them, yet in a very few years they were 

 gone. Though killing elephants for their tusks is prohibited in certain 

 districts of Africa, yet $250,000 worth of tusks so obtained are an- 

 nually smuggled out of the districts. 



It is of course unavoidable that as civilization advances in Africa, 



~ Compare Friedman, Notes on the big game of Africa and its preservation, 

 Journ. Mammalogy, vn, 73-85, 1926. Carey, Saving the animal life of Africa a 

 new method, Journ. Mammalogy, vn, 73-85, 1926; African game conservation 

 through the League of Nations a reply to Dr. Herbert Friedman, ibid., pp. 311-313; 

 Carl Akeley's last words about Africa, ibid., vin, 172, 1927. Hubbard, Big game 

 in Rhodesia, Journ. Mammalogy, iv, 228-230, 1923. Lang, The vanishing wild life 

 of Africa, Natural History, xxiv, 313-327, 1924. 



